Pair-bonds, happiness and casual sex

I never could be good when I was not happy.  Julia Ward Howe

There was a theory recently proposed that the main reason Neanderthals’ died out was that females took an active role in high risk hunting activities, whereas Homo Sapiens’ specialised along gender lines with females gathering and males hunting.  There is asymmetry between the consequences of a loss of a male and the loss of a female - as a single male with access to sufficient females can generate progeny much, much more quickly than the reverse.  Genghis Khan is a good example; living in the 14^th century, by the 21^st his male descendants are estimated as 16 million.

A consequence of this specialisation and consequent physical dimorphism can be seen within many cultures where males treat females as a resource e.g. St. Augustine of Hippo’s statement “I fail to see what use women can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children".  There is also a significant cost to both parents in raising children to independence, and uncertainty for males as to whether that expenditure is going towards their own offspring.  With that background it isn’t surprising that some cultures have codified as religious commandments a set of beliefs and behavioural expectations regarding female sexuality.

It was unfortunate that Timaru based gynaecologist Dr Makary chose to express his concerns regarding the behaviour of women he sees at his practice in those terms.  He highlighted unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in the context of high numbers of sexual partners and casual sex while intoxicated, and the inability to remember even who the sexual partner was.   It isn’t perhaps surprising considering his background that he chose to frame the problem and his suggested solution within a model he felt comfortable with i.e. that women need to return to the behaviour of their grandmothers; but the response it provoked in many cases ignored the problem he was highlighting.

Anyone who has lived on a farm would recognise his "paddock mating" analogy as being poor; mating season only is a short period during the year, the intercourse isn't really that frequent during it, and most importantly it's aimed at procreation, not fun, which may be why it's of short duration: even other apes only average 8 seconds.  Pretty much everything Dr Makary wasn't trying to convey.

Dr Farvid from Auckland University pointed out that women should be able to have safe casual sexual encounters because they gain pleasure from them, and that Dr Makary, by focusing on women exclusively and framing it in terms of morality was promoting a double standard.  Considering the number of men Dr Makary would see professionally though, it's hard to fault him for focusing on the subject of his clinical expertise.

The issue that Dr Makary and sex therapist Mary Hodson were drawing attention to, however, is that women weren’t engaged in safe sexual practices, and were in fact not even behaving safely full stop.  Whereas Dr Makary believes the issue can be resolved by turning back the clock, Dr Farvid says that “"pathologising" others' sexual choices undermined today's liberalised cultural environment that her study concluded had firmly entrenched casual encounters on the sexual menu.”

A preconceived philosophical background has informed each of their points of view, and also means they are, I believe, missing the main point.  High levels of suicide, drug and alcohol misuse and unsafe sex may all be symptoms of a single problem – our focus on becoming a pleasure seeking society because of our failure to distinguish between pleasure and happiness.

Although they are sometimes used as synonyms, they are slightly different.  Pleasure is in response to an outside stimulus – and effectively doesn’t last much beyond the duration of the stimulus.  Happiness on the other hand is an underlying state of being which isn’t entirely dependant on outside influences.  Positive psychologists have suggested it has a number of components, including; pleasure, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishments.

In “The Naked Ape” the zoologist Desmond Morris popularised the observation that human female sexuality is different from other apes, and hypothesised that it was an evolutionary response to the prolonged parental burden: to enhance the pair bond and ensure long term relationships that would support both parenting and grand-parenting. Within Dr Morris’s model lies all the components of happiness - something both models advocated above lack.  This give it a purpose - helping maintain the pair bond, which means it can become central to a variety of monogamous or relatively monogamous relationships, and not just for procreation or parenting.

Having said that, not everybody is seeking a relationship, and the human sex drive is very powerful.  While it might be enhanced by intellectual and emotional engagement, whether that’s for a period of six days, six months, six years or six decades; it can still be pleasurable without it.  The main issue is the prevention of high risk behaviours, of using pleasure as a simulacrum for happiness - and the answer to that isn’t sex education and it isn’t our grandparents morality; it’s in ensuring people have the opportunities to establish the factors that lead to happiness in their lives.